Google to open AI research centre in China

Google ended most of its services on the mainland in 2010. Image: Shutterstock

Google says it is opening an artificial intelligence research centre on the mainland to target the country's local talent, even as the US search engine remains blocked in the country.

In a statement, Google said the research centre is the first of its kind in Asia, and it will join a list of similar overseas centres operating in New York, Toronto, London and Zurich.

Li Fei-fei, chief scientist at Google's cloud AI and machine learning, wrote on her blog that the planned centre will consist of a team of AI researchers in Beijing, supported by Google China’s engineering teams.

In her blog, Li also said China is home to many of the world's top experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and pointed out that Chinese authors contributed 43 percent of all content in the top 100 AI journals in 2015.

Apart from its search engine, Google's app store, email and cloud storage services are all banned on the mainland due to censorship restrictions. The American company virtually pulled out of the mainland in 2010 after restrictions were imposed on it.